Page 87 of The Dragon With A Girl Tattoo
I kissed Yrian’s face three more times, quieting him when his voice rumbled deep in his chest.“It’s all right, my love.You rest and heal.I’ll tell them.”
“Let’s get him off the street,” Drake suggested, and I glanced up, realizing that the dragons had formed a circle around us, obviously keeping the mortals away.“We’re beginning to draw attention from the police.Kostich and his people have kept them back from us, but he can’t do that much longer.”
By the time Yrian was loaded into the ambulance, I was sobbing, ignoring my own pain, knowing how much being moved would hurt him, but after twenty minutes that I will try very hard to forget, he was laid onto a bed in Aisling’s house, Gabriel still in attendance.
Tipene, one of Gabriel’s guards who was also a healer, urged me to a chair so he could attend to my burns, but I refused unless I could sit on the edge of the bed.Tenite’s fire, like Yrian’s, affected only my flesh, so at least I didn’t have to pick bits of melted fabric from my skin.I peeled off my clothing, sitting in my underwear while Tipene applied a cold ointment to my arms, legs, and face.When he came to my upper chest, he paused.
“I don’t think you are copping a grope, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I told him, the burned part of my chest feeling so tight I thought my flesh might split.
“No, it’s ...you have something coming out of your ...erm ...”Tipene gestured toward my boobs.
I looked down, and caught sight of the glamour stuffed into my bra.“Oh, that.It’s the blue shard energy.”
“It’s not just the shard,” came a croaking whisper from the bed.Yrian was awake again, his head turned slightly so he could see me.I was delighted to see that his skin was healing, patches of the burned bits fading into his normal dark tan color.
“It isn’t?”I looked down at it, noticing that indeed the glamour had faint black filaments woven into it.
“Kashi allowed himself to be destroyed by the shard’s explosion,” Yrian said, his voice cracked and rough.
“Why would he do that?”May asked, holding out a bottle of water for me.I took it, grateful for its icy goodness as it slid down my scorched throat.
Yrian didn’t answer, but I felt him relax.
“Because he thought Tenite would return to gather his essence and place it in a new body,” Baltic said slowly, his eyes on his brother.“But Becket got to him first.”
I stared in horror at the glamour, wanting badly to fling it away from me.“Holy shit.Can I just throw it away?That would ruin the dragon-shard thing, though, right?”
“Do not, under any circumstance, use the glamour,” Drake said, his nostrils flaring.“You’d imbue whoever received it with not only the power of the shard but Bael, himself.”
“Holy shit,” I repeated, looking around for something to put it in.
“Kincsem.”Drake turned to Aisling.“Do you still have the prototype of the vessel for our shard?”
“Yup.One sec.”Aisling hurried out of the room.
“We were making a new set for our shards, and Aisling commissioned a trial one.Ah, yes, I believe your glamour will be safe in this.”He took the long, oval silver object that reminded me of an oversized test tube with fancy metal scrollwork all over it.
Carefully, I folded the glamour so that it slid into the opened case, breathing out a sigh of relief when Drake—just as carefully—screwed tight the lid.
I held out my hand for it, and for a few seconds, he looked at my hand.
“Sweetie, I think most everyone here would have a thing to say if you held three shards,” Aisling told him, patting his arm.
Reluctantly, he gave it to me.“It would be safe with us.”
“Of course it would,” Aisling said in a soothing tone.“But considering how much Becket and Yrian went through, I think it’s probably better with them.”
“Not us,” Yrian croaked again, his voice a smidgen stronger.His color was better, and some of the flesh that had been burned off was beginning to regenerate.He was a gruesome sight, but he was mine, and I was profoundly grateful that I wouldn’t have to spend my life alone.
“Who, then?”I asked him.
He closed his eyes, his hand moving until his fingers found mine.Gently, ever so gently, I curled my fingers around his.“Thirteenth Hour.”
“Oh, what a good idea.It should be safe there, so long as no one goes to all the trouble we went to when we got Desi sprung,” Ysolde said.
The others murmured agreements, and eventually, after a few more questions about what exactly had happened—which I answered, since Yrian was clearly focusing all his energy into healing—they left us alone.
“You didn’t die,” Yrian told me when I scooted over on the bed, sitting at his knees so I could hold his hand.
